Hypnotherapy is an evidence-based treatment for addiction, which can also be used to treat a variety of other psychological difficulties. Hypnotherapy combines the psychological process of hypnosis with psychotherapy. Hypnotherapy is conducted by a trained therapist, typically a registered psychologist, with a client who is informed about and understands and consents to the process.
Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, known as a trance state, which is deliberately induced by one person—the hypnotist or hypnotherapist—on another individual person or group of people—the hypnotic subject or subjects. The change in consciousness that occurs under hypnosis is more than just a feeling, it can actually be measured and observed on the EEG readings of the brains of hypnotic subjects.
Self-hypnosis is the practice of inducing hypnosis in oneself, and in fact, all hypnosis is a form of self-hypnosis. The main distinction between hypnosis and self-hypnosis is simply that self-hypnosis requires an understanding of how to induce hypnosis in yourself, whereas, with regular hypnosis, the hypnotic subject can benefit from hypnosis with no prior knowledge.
How Hypnotherapy Helps With Addiction
While in a hypnotic trance, the person being hypnotized, or hypnotic subject, is more open to suggestion by the hypnotist or hypnotherapist than they are in their usual fully alert state.
They generally become more passive and compliant with role-playing as directed by the hypnotist or hypnotherapist. Under 
hypnosis, people can become more imaginative, more open to fantasy, and sometimes, more able to access long-forgotten memories.
This relaxed and suggestible state can help people to get a different perspective on their addictive behaviors. What normally seems impossible—quitting a substance or behavior that is central to one’s existence—can seem achievable and desirable.
People undergoing hypnotherapy often get in touch with their feelings of personal mastery and power and feel able to “unlock” themselves from long-term behavior patterns that were previously inflexible and rigid.
There are many myths about hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and many of them raise the issue of whether or not hypnosis is safe. While it is safe to engage in hypnotherapy with a trained hypnotherapist, going into the experience worrying about your safety is not a good mindset for the relaxation that is central to the approach.
Therefore, if you feel anxious, worried, or suspicious about hypnosis, hypnotherapy, or your hypnotherapist, it probably is not an approach you would get much benefit from.
In some instances, people are capable of unusual mental and physical feats when they are under the influence of hypnosis. Their feelings and behaviors can also be influenced after they have come out of a hypnotic trance.
This is the main reason that hypnosis or hypnotherapy can appeal to people with addictions, as hypnosis can profoundly help people to strengthen their willpower and allow them to use their best judgment in overcoming their addictive urges and cravings.
However, those who think that hypnosis is somehow magical, and will erase their addiction in a single session are likely to be disappointed. Hypnotherapy is is a tool to unlock human potential, not a magic formula.
Hypnosis can help people to address both their addictions and associated problems, but these issues are complex and challenging both for the client and for the therapist, and hypnotherapy does not work for everyone.
By: Elizabeth Hartney, PhD
There has been a great deal of published research into the use of hypnosis with fears and phobias. Occasionally, direct suggestions for relief of anxiety or phobias prove effective.
When direct suggestions are ineffective, there are many other hypnotic techniques that may be helpful. Actually, simply the process of induction and deepening generally relieves anxiety.
Hypnotically-facilitated systematic desensitization, a neurolinguistic procedure, is very helpful. The individual learns to gain a sense of internal control over the fearful or anxiety-producing trigger.
Advantages of hypnotic desensitization over traditional behavioral desensitization include enhanced scene visualization and the ability to give posthypnotic suggestions to encourage behavioral responses to the situations that were imagined.
Mental rehearsal of successfully coping with tense situations is another method for treating anxiety and phobic disorders. When low self-esteem is determined to be an aspect of the problem, ego-strengthening methods may be employed.
Because hypnosis exploits the intimate connection between mind and body, it provides relief through improved self-regulation 
and also beneficially affects the experience of self-mastery.
Hypnosis may be used to age regress patients to experiences immediately before they began to feel anxious. In this way the sequence of reactions can be studied by the individual.
This may aid in pinpointing the situations that elicit anxiety as well as the internal dialogue and imagery that evoke problematic responses. Age regression to times prior to the development of the phobia, when the patient was coping successfully, provide a resource state that can be anchored and brought to consciousness in times of high stress.
Age regression in hypnotherapy provides access to identifying causative conflicts or past experiences that are beyond conscious awareness. When traumatic events are found to be associated with phobic reactions, it may be profitable to facilitate an age regression and abreact the feelings associated with the experience.
Hypnosis has proven effective in the management of preoperative and postoperative anxiety, including situations in which the patient is in a crisis period. This can also apply to the treatment of dental phobia.
One common example of how hypnosis or hypnotherapy can be used to treat anxiety is in work with medical conditions and treatments that characteristically evoke significant anxiety.
These include dental procedures, surgical and post-surgical situations, lumbar punctures and bone marrow aspiration, chronic headaches, cancer, burn pain, gastrointestinal disorders, nausea, respiratory disorders, tinnitus, and obstetrics/gynecology.
One example is reducing anxiety caused by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a medical diagnostic procedure which requires a patient to lie in an enclosed space for about one hour.
This enclosure induces panic and claustrophobic responses in up to 10% of patients undergoing the MRI procedure. There have been many failed diagnostic studies due to patient intolerance, claustrophobia and panic. Hypnosis has been used successfully to alleviate these reactions.
It is interesting to note that phobic patients have been shown to be, on average, more hypnotizable than others. The essence of the phobic experience is not unlike that of the event of hypnosis, and the phobic experience might be a spontaneously occurring panic-filled trance-like or dissociative experience. Hypnotherapy assists the patient to learn more about his dissociative capacity and to learn to control it.
By: Diane Zimberoff
If you’re looking for a gentle way to reduce the pain that comes with chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or osteoarthritis( OA), hypnosis may just do the trick. Studies show that more than 75% of people with arthritis and related diseases experience significant pain relief using hypnosis. Forget what you’ve seen in movies about hypnosis. Today’s practitioners are using it to give patients an additional tool to help manage their pain.
Learning to Relax with Hypnosis
Hypnosis isn’t about convincing you that you don’t feel pain; it’s about helping you manage the fear and anxiety you feel related to that pain. It relaxes you, and it redirects your attention from the sensation of pain. In a hypnosis session, which usually lasts 10-20 minutes, you will likely start by focusing on your breathing to help you relax.
Then the hypnotist will instruct you to imagine a pleasant place and describe it in detail, refocusing your attention from something that triggers negative emotions to something that will activate positive emotions, such as being at the beach.
If your mind is off to the beach, and you’re imagining the warmth of the sun, the cool of the breeze, the sand at your feet, you’ll be less focused on your pain – and ready for the indirect suggestion of how to react to pain in the future.
It might sound something like this: “You will continue to feel this same sensation of pain, but you’ll be much less distressed about it, much calmer, much more at ease, not worried about it.”
Practice Makes Perfect
Hypnosis isn’t a one-shot treatment. At first, it can be part of regular psychotherapy sessions in a doctor’s office. Hypnosis typically helps relieve pain in just 4 to 10 sessions. But some people benefit faster and others not at all. The goal is to teach patients the technique so they can use it on their own when pain strikes.
Some practitioners create recordings for patients that they can play to lead themselves into the hypnotic process. Some patients prefer to come up with their own script and not rely on a recording or the therapist’s voice to activate the process when pain strikes and they need it.
Learning hypnosis takes practice, and some people learn it more easily than others. Practice when you feel little or no pain; when you’re in a lot of pain, it can be harder to do.
Hypnosis Works for Children
Hypnosis is a tool you also can give a child to help him take control. When he feels pain, he can do something about it immediately without having to wait until mom gets there with the pills or for the pills to take effect. Having hypnosis as a tool also helps eliminate stress that comes from not having control.
For children, creating an active mental escape may be necessary. Rather than relaxing at the beach with a book, a child may want to imagine playing on the playground or kicking a soccer ball down the field.
Is Hypnosis Right for You?
Some people respond to hypnosis better than others, but there’s no harm in trying it. It has no side effects and if it doesn’t work for you, you can stop at any time. But many people report significant reduction in pain and gain a simple tool for easing it that they can use any time.
To find a qualified hypnotherapist, ask your doctor for a referral or contact the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis or the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis. Health insurance may cover hypnosis for pain therapy performed by a medical or psychological professional. (By: Jenny Nash // Arthritis.org)
Our stomachs and intestinal systems are like a second brain – it isn’t the seat of consciousness, but it does respond to hypnosis.
This “second brain” contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system. This multitude of neurons in the enteric nervous system enables us to “feel” what is going on in the inner world of our gut.
Think of the phrases we commonly use: gut instinct; butterflies in the stomach; that makes me sick to the stomach; and gut wrenching. Hypnosis can influence this “second brain” as effectively as any other neurological process.
Hypnosis and Heartburn
At least 60,000,000 Americans suffer from heartburn, sometimes the medicines work, sometimes not so well. Recently medical doctors have been turning to complementary approaches like hypnotism. This short NBC news broadcast shows why instead of reaching for TUMS you might consider hypnosis instead or in addition.
Hypnosis and Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a medical condition and a complex set of gastrointestinal symptoms – it may affect as many as 20% of the population 
in the United States. Symptoms include cramping, diarrhea (or constipation), pain, and bloating. Over 60% of sufferers are women. IBS is actually the second likely reason reported for missed days at work.
Physicians will tell you they don’t know the causes of IBS: but they do know that IBS can be aggravated by stress and that there are some anatomical changes in the lining of the colon and to the nervous system of the colon associated with the condition. Diet can also influence IBS. Those who suffer from IBS know it is far more than a nuisance and can negatively impact quality of life.
The good news is that IBS symptoms respond to hypnosis and they often respond dramatically. Research is plentiful and convincing. It is so convincing that a leading health leader (Dr Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, chair of the National Women’s Health Network) has stated that “hypnosis should be the treatment of choice for all severe cases of IBS.”
I have had the privilege of working with cancer patients in the complementary care program at Women and Infants often getting great results helping them reduce anticipatory nausea with self-hypnosis.
NBC News 2017
Hypnosis has been used for centuries for pain control, including during the Civil War when Army surgeons hypnotized injured soldiers before amputations. Recent studies have confirmed its effectiveness as a tool to reduce pain.
Among the leading researchers in the field is Guy H. Montgomery, PhD, a psychologist who has conducted extensive research on hypnosis and pain management at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he is director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program.
In one study, Montgomery and colleagues tested the effectiveness of a 15-minute pre-surgery hypnosis session versus an empathic listening session in a clinical trial with 200 breast cancer patients. The team reported that patients who received hypnosis reported less post-surgical pain, nausea, fatigue and discomfort.
The study also found that the hospital saved $772 per patient in the hypnosis group, mainly due to reduced surgical time. Patients who were hypnotized required less of the analgesic lidocaine and the sedative propofol during surgery. Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Vol. 99, No. 17)
